Bryant Johnson

Maybe you’ve noticed, there always seems to be one child during an Easter egg hunt who, unsure of what to do, sits down in the middle of the church yard with their Easter basket beside them. Setting their basket out, they appear to wait for the eggs to come and hop into their basket, and walk away, certain they will have all the eggs they hoped for.

Although it can make for a cute approach to an Easter egg hunt, it’s an unsuccessful method for the church in searching for the next person to the join its staff. Yet, this is often the style that unprepared search committees tend to take.

A posting is drafted with the job description and minor details about the position, it’s posted on the church website, and then the waiting begins. And it continues, and the team is left wondering, “What’s wrong with the church if no one will apply?”

In addition, tensions tend to rise about the vacant position and the size of the shoes that now need to be filled. Questions can be heard throughout worship on Sunday morning. “When will we find the right person?” “How will the next person do the job like Jill?” “Do we have someone else already to fill the position? I know they just announced it this morning.” The list of hopes, dreams, and expectations grows larger and larger.

For many churches, the search process can be fueled with worry and anxiety and often results in hurried and rushed search. Although there are stories (maybe legends) of how the hurry up offense resulted in a great hire, it’s more likely that the results of a rushed hiring process are jeopardizing what might be best for the ministry, creating unmet expectations, and settling for the first person who provides a good interview.

In order to conduct the best search, there are three crucial components to consider.

The search work always starts in-house.

Assessing what is and what isn’t currently working in the ministry is the first step. What people love about the ministry and what they hope for in the future can be key in making a successful hire. Reviewing the current mission and vision of the church and outlining how this position fits into those goals will set the new hire up for success. What new season is the church entering and how will that impact the job description and responsibilities? These are big questions that take time to answer. The answers though are the foundation of all the work the search team is expected to do.

Form a clear process and timeframe.﻿

Creating clarity about the different stages of the search and setting time frames for each help to keep the work on track. Consider a six-month timeframe when thinking about next steps. How long do you intend to review and assess the ministry? How long will resumes be collected? When will phone interviews begin and when do we intend to move toward in-person interviews? When do we expect to be done? Not only do the answers to these questions help the search team stay on track, but it provides a communication map to be shared with church members, too. Often, having a clear and unified response from the team is enough to turn the tide of anxiety toward patient anticipation.

Be prepared to do your homework.

Avoid the tendency to post the position and sit back and wait for resumes to appear. This is a search and requires some hard work from the team. Create an elevator pitch and social media posts the church members can share. Shape the interview questions to match the type of experience you’re looking for. Take time to discover how the candidates previous work matches up with the newly fine-tuned job description. Follow-up with references to hear more about their previous work and experience. Does that reflect what the ministry needs now and in the future? As a team, agree to wait for the right candidate.

Ah… fall is in the air and for many of us our ministry programs have kicked off. Your church is thrilled with the typical fall energy that brings an increase in attendance and excitement for the year ahead. Choirs are planning for the Christmas cantata. Children’s ministries are arranging fall events like Trunk-N-Treat. And youth ministries programs are in full swing and planning for the fall retreat with high schoolers somewhere offsite.

Yet, in the middle of the excitement that is fall ministry, somewhere in the back of our minds we’re beginning to think about next summer. In some ways it seems so far off, but that’s the exact right amount of time to get our summer calendars and schedules together.

With that in mind here are ten things to consider as you develop next summer’s calendar.

Consider your mission and ministry goals. Summer events, retreats, and programs across age groups in the church can feel like last minute, haphazard, and purposeless planning… when they’re planned last minute, haphazardly, and without purpose. By starting our planning early, it allows time to reflect on our mission and our ministry goals first. Then plan camps, retreats, small groups, mission trips, VBS, or any other summer program in a way the will assure we meet our goals.

Request other ministry calendars. Check with the other ministries in the church and see what they’ve got planned or are considering for next summer. This will assure that we don’t step on each other’s toes, demonstrate your willingness to be a team player, and help avoid conflicts that often arise when we wait until the last minute.

Collect school calendars. It’s likely your church serves families who attend multiple different schools that probably get out of school and begin school at different times. If your hoping that the multigenerational mission trip will be well attended, plan it around the availability of the families you hope to serve. This can be challenging to navigate once you’ve collected the calendars but will help to make the best decision for the best possible outcomes.

Communicate early. As you soon as dates are solidified for your ministry’s summer calendar, publish them. Don’t wait. Let’s help make it easy for others to participate. Parents and volunteers are often requesting their time off at least twelve months in advance. Most summer camps for children and youth publish next summer’s dates at the end of the current event. To help our families prioritize our ministry opportunities, earlier is always better.

Help families plan. See above. Families deeply want to be involved, but they often won’t wait. They want their children and youth to be involved, but they are coordinating with other groups who are competing with their children’s time. Plan early and help families do the same.

Review the church wide calendar. This can be an often-missed source of guidance when planning ahead. Just double check to see if what you’re considering is already blocked out by another group. By starting in the fall, that allows plenty of time to change or consider new dates to avoid the conflict. And if the calendar is open, be sure that your ministry gets added.

Request rooms and church vehicles. Once your on the church wide calendar, be sure to make any room and vehicle requests early in the process.

Coordinate payments. Many of the trips that get planned, whether they are a church-wide mission trip, a youth ministry camp, or an offsite volunteer training, require a registration and payments. By planning early, it allows participants to schedule and plan financially as well as with their calendars.

Build momentum. For an upcoming mission trip, you may want to have multiple meetings to prepare the group for the work or experience they will have. Each meeting builds excitement for the upcoming opportunity. Each meeting prepares their hearts and minds for what’s to come. Each meeting the Holy Spirit nudges us closer to those we will serve. These are momentum building meetings that will help the trip into the memory maker it deserves to be.

Add your fall kickoffs. Remember that the summer schedule is not just about summer but help to launch our falls ministries with success. Be sure to include any fall kickoffs, the start of new ministries, and returning to the regular yearly schedule at the end of the summer calendar.

With a little time and attention, the summer calendar can be scheduled, dates set, plans made, and you’re freed up to focus on the ministry this week, while avoiding the rush and anxiety that is guaranteed to take place if you wait until spring.

One thing is for certain at each of our churches…we hope for our ministries to grow. However, growing ministries can put a strain on understaffed ministries. That is especially true when the growth in the ministry takes place quickly. Most churches will praise the work, energy, and effort that the staff have put in to growing the ministry, but we often miss how difficult it can be to maintain and sustain the growth or levels of participation that are higher than we are staffed for.

Think about carrying a heavy object. We might be able to lift it and carry it for a distance, but eventually, our arms and legs get tired. We might take a break and set that object down for a bit, before carrying on. We might realize it’s just too heavy to carry. Or, with a deep breath, we’ll lift and give it our all for another short distance until we’re simply exhausted.

Ministry can be quite similar for children’s and youth ministry staff. Many church staff can lead a ministry for a season under the strain of growth or at higher levels than other churches, but one of two things will often happen. These two results are quite predictable. First, the ministry may simply level back out to what would be a normal level of participation. For children’s ministry it is normal for one full-time staff person to sustain the engagement of about 75 children. And for youth ministry one full-time staff person can sustain about 50 youth engaged in the ministry. Or, the staff will get burned out, disengage, or even resign from their current position. It’s typically not a question of IF this will happen, but WHEN will it happen.

The good news is there is a way that leads to better results.

Keeping normal participation levels in mind provides us with a tool to manage and communicate what can reasonably be expected from the ministry, but it also provides us with a way to think and plan strategically for our future staffing needs.

Using these norms, we can build a strategic staffing plan (check out this template). A strategic staffing plan helps us to share with church leaders, pastors, and staff that “this is how it could be” to support the larger number of children and youth the ministry is currently seeing involved. By creating clarity about how many children or youth we can faithfully structure our church staff to support the current and future needs of the ministry. By planning ahead, projecting for growth, and thinking about our future staffing needs we are poised to prepare for the growth of the ministry rather than react to something that has grown out of hand.

A strategic staffing plan also allows us to acknowledge when the church is being the best stewards of the gifts that God has given the church. Certainly, there may be a season in which God gifts the ministry with more children or youth than the church can faithfully sustain. It is in this place, we were are grateful for the work that we are blessed to do, but also, by using the norms above, have conversations with church leaders about healthy expectations the ministry and agree on the number of children and youth that we are prepared to serve.

As you peruse Facebook, you’re bound to see the list challenges that appear with titles like, “Top 50 Books Everyone Should Read, How Many Have You Read?” Or, “The Bucket List Challenge, How Many of the Activities Have You Completed?” While it’s not popped up on my feed, I can imagine the list of items on the church challenge list.

Handed out last week’s bulletins for worship

Led a mission project with fewer volunteers than it required

Crashed the church van

Left the microphone on while in the restroom

Prayed with the wrong person in the hospital

Had an infant spit up on my stoles

Angered an entire committee during my first week

Called a church member by the wrong name

This list of challenges that you may face in the church is endless. The truth is that your church is either resolving a challenge or creating one. With God at work in your church, it’s a constant ebb and flow of challenges in the life of the church. While many of us face the next challenge with anxiety, we should be anticipating the next challenge with joy.

To do so, let’s consider the approach that is taken. Often, we take the next good idea from the top of the stack on our desk and move to implementing that latest and greatest idea. Sometimes, this will work for a season, but it rarely addresses the underlying problems. You may hear that new visitors don’t return to your church because they went unnoticed during their visit. Rather than reviewing how they are greeted or welcomed, the church might move straight to develop a new member class that build connections with church staff and leaders. While that might provide great value, it still has not addressed how visitors are greeted, welcomed, contacted, and followed-up with after their first day at the church. The good idea is… well… good, but it’s really the third step in addressing a challenge.

There are three crucial steps every church should take when addressing the challenges, the church is facing.

Assess – Take time to ask questions and listen to responses. As James suggests, we move quickly to listening to those who are impacted by the challenges in the church. We listen for what they love about the church and why this challenge is frustrating to them. It’s in this stage that we truly discover the root of problem we face. Like a doctor would suggest, if your hip hurts the problem may lie in your hip, knee, or ankle.

Blueprint – Using all that you have learned while assessing (listening) the ministry or challenge area, it’s time to draft a new blueprint for the ministry area. You’re building a new plan to achieve new results and speak joy into the ministry. It’s in this phase that new plans are created, new ideas explored, and imagining what it might look like if we moved the ministry in this direction.

Implement – It’s now time to put the next good idea in place. However, only the ideas that help to achieve the new results we desire should be included. If it won’t provide the new results that we want to produce, keep it in your “good idea” stack for another time and focus your energy on the blueprint that’s been designed to achieve those new outcomes from the ministry.

It’s tempting to jump straight to designing a new blueprint or even implementing new ideas without first address the underlying problem. However, it’s unlikely to build the momentum you deeply want to see. Take time to listen to your church, before moving into action.

“It’s easier if I do it myself,” I responded to a volunteer. It was a Sunday afternoon and we were preparing for our youth group Super Bowl party that evening. I had run to the grocery store and picked up drinks, stopped by the restaurant to pick up wings, and gathered all of the meal supplies from the church kitchen and began to setup the table when the volunteer arrived. Does this story sound familiar yet?

“You should have let me know you had so much to do. I would have loved to picked up the food,“ she said.

“It’s easier if I do it myself.” These words echo through churches. Pastors say them. Children’s directors say them. Youth directors say them. Even volunteers who are serving to coordinate major events for the church have said them.

I could easily justify this wrong answer to you. We’ve all had our reasons for taking the easier route. In this case, I had the credit card, ordered the food, and I knew the plan. As long as I did the work, we didn’t have to worry about the church credit card, processing reimbursement, or a volunteer paying out of pocket. It was just easier for me to do it myself. Isn’t this typically the case? And the truth is, it is easier to do it myself.

Here’s the question I ask myself and propose to you.

It’s easier, but is it better?

Does it make for a better ministry when we do go about our work all on our own? Are we equipping others if we do it ourselves? How are helping to setup the long-term success of the ministry?

If you’ve uttered these words to yourself, to someone else, or have heard them in the church let me propose three reason why it’s better to ask someone to help.

Enlisting Others is a Time Saver: “It takes more time to tell someone else how to do it than if I just did myself.” That’s correct for the first time. However, when you share the work with others you save time for yourself. If you have 20 hours of preparation for a trip and share it with one other person, the work is now accomplished in 10 hours. Every time you enlist someone else, you are investing in time management and developing a ministry that accomplish its work with efficiency. Now that you’ve got that 10 hours back, how will spend that time?

An Exponential Multiplier: Expressing, in word or action, that you must complete each task means that the impact of the ministry is dependent on one person’s ability, time, and schedule. While we might never explicitly state this out loud, we demonstrate it when we take the workload on our shoulders and don’t ask for help. Rather, the ministry that invests in volunteers will have a deeper and longer-lasting impact on those it is called to serve. I always found that each adult involved the ministry was able to connect with others who I had not been able to reach. For each volunteer you equip, the ministry is prepared for five more people to be involved. If you told me that every $1 invested, I would get $5 back on, I would not hesitate to make that investment. This is how it works with volunteers. What’s stopping you now?

Opportunity to Procrastinate: This week someone said to me, “I wish I had more time to do the things I love and need to do.” Do you dream of having more time to prepare to teach? More time to spend with those you’re called to serve? What about having more time to invest in the future goals and vision for the ministry? By enlisting others in the ministry, having enough time for what you love to do, can become a reality. However, it will seem like a far-off dream for anyone who takes on more for the sake of easy.

While we can accomplish the work on our own, is it better or is it just easier?

What ways have you fought against the easier way in your work? What benefits have you found when you do?

LATEST BLOG POST

WANT TO WORK WITH US?

Footer

WHO ARE WE?

Ministry Architects is a highly-skilled team of pastors, teachers, executives, youth workers, children's pastors, writers and professors. We're fanatical about success and we can help your church find clear direction and sustained momentum backed up by properly aligned resources.